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I think RGL makes the game much more enjoyable. Being able to plan from the beginning of the game to have the last move at the bottom of 6 hugely favors certain types of armies. It's not just about the guy trying to win with a last minute objective grab, it's also about the guy looking for one last chance to pull out a win by getting one more turn. Tournaments should allow more time or streamline the pre-game to give RGL a chance to effect the outcome, as it is now people just slow play to get 4 turns when it suits their army so making it fixed at 6 doesn't change that aspect of "gaming the system".

 Redbeard wrote:
There's no great challenge of skill involved in realizing that Iron Arm is worth five times as much to its owner than any one-shot witchfire power. The fact that they cost the same amount is a disgrace to the idea that armies can be equal if their point costs are the same. If you think it's such a great test of skill, I'd gladly play a game where we each have the same daemon army, but all my MCs get Iron Arm and Warp Speed, and all yours get smite and life leech.

Depends on the situation. Puppetmaster is worth far more than Iron Arm to a Chaos Sorcerer; Psychic Shriek is usually preferable to my fast-moving psykers.

And the bottom line is that since you CAN'T just buy Iron Arm, you have to be able to plan for games without it. Much like since you can't know exactly which turn the game will end, you have to have plans to cover multiple contingencies.

 Janthkin wrote:

Depends on the situation. Puppetmaster is worth far more than Iron Arm to a Chaos Sorcerer; Psychic Shriek is usually preferable to my fast-moving psykers.

Sure, but okay, one is better than the other.

And the bottom line is that since you CAN'T just buy Iron Arm, you have to be able to plan for games without it. Much like since you can't know exactly which turn the game will end, you have to have plans to cover multiple contingencies.

I disagree that these are the same, or address even remotely similar game design issues.

Random Game Length solves one very specific game design issue - as others have noted in this thread, it prevents speedy objective-grabby armies from hiding all game and then winning when they get 2nd turn. This has a minimal impact on the point costs of armies, and as it is a known, can be built into the costs of all units. Perhaps without random game length, any unit with such objective grabbing prowess would need to cost significantly more points to reflect its power under a fixed-game-length system.

Random psychic powers changes the composition of your army. And, while you're right, your chaos sorcerer may prefer power A over power B, the basic concept doesn't change. A Great Unclean One with Iron Arm is worth more points than a Great Unclean One with Smite. That said, when two players face off with identical armies, and one's Great Unclean One gets Iron Arm (and Warp Speed, for good measure) and the other's gets Smite and Life Leech, the game goes from being balanced to being distinctly unbalanced.

Again, drawing parallels to heavy weapons, your army may need your tac squads to carry lascannons, as those give you game against tanks. But, too bad, you rolled heavy bolters. I guess it's just a test of skill to see if you can kill a landraider with a heavy bolter now. Random Psychic Powers suck. That's not saying that the "price all power equally" model that we saw in many 5th ed books is good either - again, some powers are just worth more points than others, so pricing them all the same is also bad (and leads to everyone taking the same stuff). But making them random was the easy way for the designers to force variety into the psychic game. Pricing powers is hard, and they're not good at it (See: Lash of Submission, in one of the last codexes to have variable costed psychic powers)